Sunday, July 26, 2009

Sleeper

Tom Cruise and Hollywood have discovered Ed Brubaker, but comic book fans have known about Brubaker and his crime comics for quite some time. According to wire reports, Cruise is seeking the film rights to Brubaker's Sleeper, and the property does seem perfect for the big screen. Sleeper features a secret agent (Holden Carver) whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain, gives him a powerful healing factor, and allows him to store pain and pass it on to others through skin contact. Carver goes undercover in a super villain’s powerful organization and is eventually caught between two warring sides with unclear allegiances. Mayhem ensues. I'm sure this was one of the most successful Hollywood pitch meetings of all time. It's a 'high concept', easily translated to the screen, and it's a great role for somebody like Tom Cruise. Warner Brothers thinks this might be the next big movie franchise, on the level of the Bourne movies.

So who is Ed Brubaker, and what else is he working on? By his own admission, as a teenager he was 'kind of a thief and a drug-addict...and lived in a really ugly world of speed-freaks and scumbags.' Fortunately, he turned himself around. But he retained a somewhat bent perspective as well as an interest in dark subject matter such as pulp crime fiction. (In his autobiography, My Dark Places, crime author James Ellroy describes a similar scenario, with similar results.)

Brubaker is probably best known for 'killing Captain America'. Except it was actually Steve Rogers that was killed, and the Captain America persona was taken over by his sidekick, Bucky. All grown up now, Bucky was previously known as the Winter Soldier, a programmed Soviet assassin. Let's just say that he has some issues. He is a much darker character than Steve Rogers, and is much more suited to Brubaker's noir style. In the hands of Brubaker, Captain America has become a pulpy blend of sci-fi and espionage.

Brubaker is also one of the creators of Criminal. A straight-ahead crime series, Criminal features career criminals and ordinary people who get in over their heads, with violent and unpredictable results. One volume centered on a prizefighter who runs into some problems with the local crime bosses. Another story is about a Vietnam veteran who gets involved in a heist. Criminal is sharply written, beautifully illustrated by Sean Phillips, and is a worthy homage to the crime fiction of Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson. Each issue also has a prose section in the back, highlighting subjects such as the Black Lizard reprints of classic crime novels, or Harry-O, the classic TV crime show from 1974-75.

Brubaker and Phillips are also working on a new series called Incognito, which Brubaker says is "about a completely amoral guy with super-powers forced to pretend he's a normal law-abiding citizen, because he's in Witness Protection."

See links below for more information. No word on exactly when Sleeper will come to the big screen, but it looks like things are coming along nicely.



http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/books/08capt.html
http://criminalcomic.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_%28comic_book%29



Saturday, July 25, 2009

Lush Life

Lush Life is the highly acclaimed 2008 novel by Richard Price, best known as one of the writers of HBO's The Wire. Set in New York City's Lower East Side, the book works on several different levels. It is, of course a crime novel, and it works especially well as a mystery and a 'police procedural'. But it is also a very insightful study of a community in transition due to the 'land rush' of the last decade. Price very successfully portrays every socio-economic strata of the borough, from the Chinese and Hispanic underclass all the way to the mostly white yuppies, wannabe artists, actors and other strivers who are helping to gentrify the area.

The story has several characters at its center: Eric Cash, a 35 year old would-be actor who is just about to give up his dream; Matty, the detective who tries to solve the crime; and Tristan, the inner city kid who was unwittingly involved. Price displays each perspective with gripping psychological realism and succeeds in generating considerable sympathy for the motivations and difficulties of the criminals, their victims, and the police. Price's characters and dialogue really draw you in, and the plot keeps you hanging to the very end.